Rei do Pornô: A Ascensão e Queda de Ron Jeremy

First, you must have some knowledge of Ron Jeremy's career and persona before watching or this documentary will not make much sense. They provide little background, much presuming you already know.

Second, this allows some but very little of the positive side of his life & career. It definitely especially in episode 2, takes a prosecutory attitude. In fact during one interview when the person is speaking positively about Ron Jeremy the director interrupts him and they need to ask (while on camera) for permission from the director to finish.

Most of this documentary is just allowing a handful of porn stars, porn producer, a single friend & his personal assistant to give some stories at length that took place with him. Some positive, most negative. Some of these stories are very disturbing. I think they avoided interviewing or just didn't include people that may have shared much nicer & happier experiences with Ron Jeremy as I have seen in other documentaries about him or porn in general. Most of the people interviewed are believable although there are things said that I would question points of.

This is definitely watchable and I did come away with an opinion about Ron Jeremy but not a strong opinion or one that covers his entire life & career. They just didn't seem to be very informative and skipped almost all of his earlier life & career. This is more entertainment rather than a documentary.

The story of Ron Jeremy is appalling and tragic: a tale of an actor in pornographic movies who carried on off set as he did on it, eventually indicted for numerous counts of sexual assault only as his health fails. The problem with the sex industry in general is, while it satisfies basic human needs, it often seems to be inextricably entanged with abuse and exploitation; so you might think a documentary about Jeremy would focus on whether his behaviour should be considered in any way surprising, and if not, what should be done to change that. Instead, it has a childish "porn is cool" attitude, and Jeremy is portayed, devoid of context, as a lone predator. And maybe that's the truth; but this program did not convince me.

I will do my best to review the miniseries and not Ron Jeremy himself or his victims.

To start off I'm not sure what viewers were complaining about. The early part of the first episode DOES explain how he entered the porn community and how he rose to fame. Not in much detail, I think they were hoping two short episodes would explain the basics in case there's anyone out there who doesn't know anything about Ron Jeremy. The documentary also goes into detail of how most of these actors first met and worked together. They tell some fun and silly stories about Ron before getting into stories of how he would stock, molest, violate, and rape women. Almost all are first hand accounts. They don't allow the witnesses to tell too many stories about other women. My main complaint is while we get plenty of interviews with his coworkers we do not get much in the way of actual investigation, nor do they interview any family members or law enforcement officers involved with his case. We do however get many accounts from the victims of how they were treated by society after coming out and sharing their rape allegations publically. We also don't see more than a few frames of the trial and nothing about his arrest or the official investigation. Its the kind of documentary where the film makers just let the interviewees talk and that's it. They don't have any voiceover explaining facts, and only a handful of title cards with information. For this reason I have to rate it low as a documentary, but the interviews were illuminating and felt genuine.

Also as opposed to the majority of American documentaries, this one does an amazing job of not pushing you to believe a viewpoint or get the viewer to feel a particular emotional state, or take a position. Nor do they speculate on any facts. I like that and I wish more documentaries took this approach. I'd also like them to have more facts. All they documented was a bunch of verbal stories from victims and a few from his coworkers, like cameramen and directors. The second episode ends with his legal situation up in the air. I wonder if now was the best time to make and release a documentary like this. Maybe they will do a follow up. No official word. I would have liked something much more thorough.

NOTE ---- This review is NOT commentary on the TOPIC. It's a review of the 2 hour television mini-series as it's written, directed and presented. -------

This mimi-series doesn't contain any real details about Ron Jeremy's rise in the industry, nor his fall from grace...

There is zero information about how he got into the industry, or what made him successful... and there's zero FACTUAL information about the actual charges leveled against him. Everything is all merely a bunch of third-party here-say.

The only direct, first-hand, content this contains is from alleged victims regarding the allegations. Those should not be dismissed in ANY way... but it doesn't make for a good mini-series when all it does is simply point a finger with nothing more.

It's just 2 hours of "someone said" reporting. No facts, not trial information, not testimony, no defense... nothing. It's a waste of time.